By Kim Gilliland, Co-founder of Soapnut Republic
Let me take you back to where this all began. A tiny kitchen in Shanghai, and me, very pregnant with our first daughter. My husband, Bobby, carried a story from his own childhood in New Zealand – as a two-year-old, he’d accidentally swallowed a mouthful of bleach. It’s the kind of thing that sticks with you, and becoming parents ourselves brought it right back to the surface. We couldn’t stop asking each other the same question: what exactly did we want our children growing up around?
So, we went looking for products that were genuinely safe, not just marketed that way. What we found was disappointing. Even many imported “eco” brands relied on ingredients that weren’t truly safe for the people using them and their families. If we wanted better, we’d have to make it ourselves.
Where it started
That search led us to soapnut berries – the dried fruit shells of the Sapindus tree, used across several Asian and Native American societies for centuries, both for cleaning and for healing skin ailments. We started mixing soapnut berries into products on our own kitchen bench in Shanghai. They were remarkably effective at cleaning, and gentle enough for anyone with sensitive skin, including our baby’s. One product led to another, and somewhere early in that process, without ever sitting down to fully plan it, Soapnut Republic began to take shape.
That baby was the first of three. Over those same foundational years in Shanghai, I gave birth to two more daughters, and our family grew up right alongside the business. Bottles and formulas on one side of the kitchen, three little girls on the other, each one a reason the products had to be genuinely safe.
Instagram – @soapnutrepublic
From there, Soapnut Republic grew the way small things often do – one market stall, one conversation, one customer at a time. We didn’t have a warehouse at that stage, a website, or a plan beyond the next weekend. What we had was a product we believed in and a willingness to stand in front of strangers and explain, again and again, why plant-based cleaning mattered. Some of those strangers became regulars. A couple of them, in particular, kept coming back, not just to buy, but to talk about where the business could go.
Growing the team
Fourteen years later, those regulars are running the company with us. Andrew Kuiler, our Managing Director, and John Pabon, our Marketing Director, were both among my very first customers at that Shanghai market, and became good friends and loyal customers long before either of them joined the business. About 12 months ago, just as we were mapping out plans to bring manufacturing to Australia, we brought them on as strategic partners. Exactly the right support at exactly the right time we needed to take Soapnut Republic to its next level.
Over the past decade and a half, Soapnut Republic grew from that single stall into a business manufacturing and distributing across Asia and Scandinavia, with a range that now spans 35 products – everything from laundry liquid and dish soap to glass cleaner and wool wash, all built around the same soapnut-based core we started with. We built that growth the slow way. Relationship by relationship, market by market, without ever compromising on the “100% safe and effective” promise that got us started.
Coming home to Australia
This year, that journey has brought us somewhere new: home. We recently started manufacturing locally in Melbourne, and launched with five of our best-selling products produced on Australian soil. We believe we’re the first soapnut-based home care brand to launch in Australia, which is both exciting and a real responsibility. There isn’t a local playbook to follow, we’re writing it as we go, the same way we did in Shanghai all those years ago.
We introduced the Australian range at the Reed Gift Fair in Melbourne, which was a full-circle moment. The same instinct that had me behind a market stall is now behind a trade show booth, telling the same story to a new audience. And it’s working. We’ve picked up stockists across Victoria and beyond, from established regional stores to newer eco and lifestyle retailers, with more conversations underway.
What we’re building now is bigger than a product range. Proof that “natural” and “effective” were never in tension, and that a business can grow across continents without losing the values it started with. We’re expanding our Australian footprint deliberately, into home, lifestyle, health and eco stores first, with a direct-to-consumer subscription model on our website to make sustainable habits easier to keep up.
Take the leap and start
If there’s one thing I’d want other founders to take from our story, especially women building something from nothing, wherever in the world they are, it’s this: you don’t need the whole plan before you start. I started with a genuine concern for my child’s safety, a kitchen bench, and a handful of soapnut berries, and somewhere along the way, raised three daughters while I was at it. Everything else – the team, the manufacturing, the fourteen years – came from simply continuing to show up for the thing I believed in.
